


Tommy Riddle and the Goblet of Firewhiskey

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Alcoholism, Canon Divergent, College, Comedy, Crack, Funny, Gen, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes, Questionable Narrator, Unreliable Narrator, fraternity, timeline divergent, undiagnosed alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2006160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brother Tommy has a drinking problem.</p>
<p>(Or, an alternative version of how things went wrong.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tommy Riddle and the Goblet of Firewhiskey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Higgins](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Higgins), [hale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hale/gifts), [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Unbeta'd, does not conform to the timeline of the books.
> 
> This was fun. I am still unfortunately as bad at the Garageband update as when I began. But good practice.

Stream the podfic from Mediafire [here](http://www.mediafire.com/listen/yktbkbpwxc4ypv4/Tommy_Riddle_and_the_Goblet_of_Firewhiskey.m4a)

Download the zipped file of the podfic from Mediafire [here](http://www.mediafire.com/download/x6dyqbtboe6ay9v/Tommy_Riddle_and_the_Goblet_of_Firewhiskey.m4a.zip)

  
**Song credit:**  
One Last Drink - Enter the Haggis  
Rehab - Amy Winehouse  
Leaving Hogwarts  


  
~ ~ ~ ~  


None of the Brothers liked it when Tom got drunk. There should be a scale, they believed, that established the maximum number of drinks a wizard was legally permitted to consume was inversely proportional to their magical potency. This law was first proposed on the eve Tommy began pledging; he had indulged in a few too many glasses of pinot grigio and turned all of the table legs into snakes. It had ruined quiche night. 

The Brothers didn't mean to imply that Tom was a bad guy. Everyone was a little bit of a dick when they were drinking, after all; Nott liked to pee in any unattended shoes he encountered (fortunately they were usually his own), and Macnair loved to start fight clubs but would cry if anyone actually hit him. Besides, Tommy was a Slytherin, and the Slytherins were brothers for life. But it was all right for a brother to recognize that one of his little brothers was slightly more of a great big bag of fetid microdicks after a few brewskies than his other brothers, and Drunk Tommy was the fetid microdick king. 

His unusual brand of awfulness was caused in large part by his (drunkenly) self-proclaimed Extraordinary Magical Prowess. While arrogant, Drunk Tommy wasn't exactly wrong. The Slytherin Brothers concurred they had never seen someone possessed of such extraordinary power, not to mention charisma. Brother Snape, who was two pledge classes behind Brother Tommy, swore that he had charmed his way out of taking the final for their Muggle Sociology course. Possibly literally. Tommy's wand-work was swift, and notoriously tricky to detect.

Fortunately Tommy's charisma and magical verve was coupled with an extraordinary intuition for self-preservation that had henceforth never let him down. However wild his drunken spells became, he managed to put things right enough before the sun came up that Professor Slughorn, their faculty liaison, could laugh off his behavior as "collegiate antics."

Tommy’s self-assumed role as the unofficial punchline of every drunken Slytherin story came to an unexpected resolution the beginning of his senior year. After being elected head of the Slytherin Fraternity through his sheer legendaryness, the stories of Tom's antics petered away into quiet but fervid mass respect. The Brothers tiptoed past his dorm room door and spoke in hushed whispers whenever he appeared; he always seemed to be on the cusp of a crucial exam or paper, and nobody wanted a repeat of the Butcher Knife Incident.

(Pledge Lucius had accidentally decapitated Tommy's laptop just before midterms while practicing a levitation charm, and Tom had been inconsolable. "You guys are basically my family, and I just wanna do well for you," he had sobbed into Brother Knott's shoulder. "Professor Dumbledore keeps telling me that I represent all the Slytherins to the rest of Hogwarts, and it's really hard, guys. It's like, really hard.")

To the disappointment of a rather extensive betting pool, Tommy did not crack under the pressure. He did a calming breath exercise, finished his essay with quill and ink, and proceeded to beast his classes for the duration of the semester. Gone was Tommy the drunken lout who transfigured the carpets into lava and filled the Gryffindor Brothers' keg with Polyjuice Potion so they all looked like Brother Snape for the afternoon; this was Tom, the wiley senior with a thirst not for firewhiskey but to prove himself to his surrogate family. 

After final exams (Tommy checked to make sure ALL of the brothers were done in a still-surprising display of his newfound social awareness), the Slytherins held an open-house marathon of the Wizards of Waverly place drinking game. It was cosy event; other students rarely attended Slytherin parties, so it was just the Brothers. Brother Snape had his infant godson for the evening while the boy’s parents escaped to the Hog's Head for some much-needed and oft-forgone alone time. Baby Harry was passed from lap to lap so that each tipsy brother had the chance to coo over him and play patty-cake. He returned to Brother Snape's lap yawning, and buried his tiny face in his godfather's chest with a snore worthy, they agreed, of a future uncouth Gryffindor. 

"It's just draining, you know?" Tom grumbled, collapsing forward onto the coffee table and rattling several of the empty bottles. "I never knew it was hard to be smart and have people expect you to do great things. I never knew. I feel so guilty when I fuck up now and people look at me all sad. Like, disappointed. It's just like, I feel like I'm not taking care of myself, you know? Like, every time I skip a meal or shower or quidditch practice because I have a paper to write or an exam to study for, I’m losing a little part of what makes me me.”

“Like with magic?” Pledge Lucius asked woozily. The Brothers hadn’t had the heart to tell him yet that his beloved Shirley Temples were virgin drinks, and he was currently fishing the maraschino cherry out with placebo-clumsy fingers. 

Tom toyed with one of the empty bottles contemplatively. “Not magic, Lucy. Feelings. Feelings like that spell. You know the one, it goes like this.”

The bottle glowed a vivid red.

“No, Tom, NO!” Macnair dove at Tom, who wrestled him happily. “WHAT THE HELL, MAN.”

“This is a horcrux-”

Macnair’s ratty ‘Accio Bodyguard’ tee glowed red, albeit a shade less vivid than the bottle. Macnair yelped and pulled it off, sending Tom sprawling across the other brothers’ feet.

“-and this is a horcrux-”

Nott’s sodden loafer glowed red, and the pee evaporated in an acrid puff.

“And this-”

“That’s quite enough,” Brother Snape snapped, snatching at Tom’s wand hand while baby Harry wailed. 

As if in slow motion the Brothers rose to their feet but it was too late. Tom fastened his hands around Harry’s head and mumbled into his fuzzy scalp “-is my greatest horcrux of all!”

Baby Harry glowed a vivid red. 

“THOMAS MARVOLO RIDDLE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.” 

“I made him special. Now, the baptism!” Tom reached for the firewhiskey. Brother Snape jerked Harry away from his older brother, who had the decency to look abashed as he drew up his knees and regarded the other men. “Did I do a bad thing?”

“You turned my godson into a horcrux, Tommy, so yeah, I’d say you did a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.” Brother Snape gestured at Harry, who burbled and continued to look remarkably well apart from exuding a violently neon crimson light. “Lily’s gonna kill me.”

“Is it like Azkaban bad?”

“Yes! Maybe. I don’t know.” Brother Severus sighed. “That’s not the point, Tommy. It’s like we talked about; rules and laws are indicative of our value system. When you break the law, your punishment isn’t arbitrary; your punishment is determined by the damage to the victim. Baby Harry is the victim here, Tommy. You fucked up baby Harry.”

“But I made him special.” Tommy pulled at the carpet, and the fibres began to bubble under his fingers. “I put a little bit of me in him. I’m inside baby Harry now, forever.”

Brother Snape frowned.

“I hear it now that I say it out loud,” Tommy said. The carpet subsided into its usual docile pattern, and he drew up his knees again. “Maybe I can pull it out of him. Pull myself out of him. Pull the little bit of myself I planted - implanted - inside his tiny body...just let me try something.”

“NO.” Brother Snape jerked baby Harry away from Tommy’s grasping hands. He held him at arm’s length, and all the Brothers leveled him with an appraising look. Baby Harry was not amused, and fussed.

The doorbell rang.

“Just a minute,” Pledge Lucius shrieked, and drew the curtains tightly. Two silhouettes appeared, backlit by the porch lantern, and one of them rapped sharply on the glass.

“Is that Harry crying? Severus, what did you do. Lily, I told you we should’ve made Sirius his only godfather-”

“Not the moment, James,” the other silhouette snapped. “Sev, let us in. Is everything all right?”

“WhatdowedowhatdowedowhatdoweDO.” Brother Snape bounced baby Harry frantically on his shoulder, and stared at the bottle Tommy had grabbed. “That one’s fading a bit, isn’t it?”

Macnair held up his ratty tee. “This is. What happens if…” He ripped one of the sleeves off, and Tommy flopped on the carpet like a dying fish.

“We could say we spilled the wing sauce on him.” All the Brothers turned to stare at Pledge Baddock, and he fidgeted in his chair. "What? You're not supposed to perform magic on babies until they're at least 18 months and the anterior fontanelle closes over. My neurology professor had an essay on our final exam on the idiots who gave their kids brain damage by doing cleaning charms on them instead of changing their diapers."

Macnair hurriedly dunked the sleeve of his tee into the tureen of sauce beside the buffalo wings. "Oh, leave off, you big diva," he snapped as Tommy turned rather ashen. "I'm sure tabasco never hurt anyone's soul. I've seen your body covered in worse, at any rate." He covered baby Harry’s eyes as he dabbed the dripping rag on his face. “Get his mittens on so they don’t notice his hands are red, too.”

Pledge Lucius fumbled the tiny knitted mittens onto baby Harry’s hands as Brother Snape hurried towards the adjoining foyer. A silence the Slytherin Fraternity House had never before borne witness to descended upon the Brothers in the parlor as they heard the door swing open, and a pleasant, somewhat tipsy-sounding voice said, “Hello, Sev. Harry all right, then?”

“Yes,” Brother Snape’s voice responded. “Only...only Lily, I’ve realized something awful, and before I give him to you, you need to hear the story. The whole story.”

“I told you-”

“Not the moment, James. Severus, give me my child.”

“Let me-”

“My child, Severus.” 

“Stop pushing, Lily, he’s fine, just a bit of wing sauce on his face. I was about to clean him off when little Malcolm Baddock stopped me - neurohealing major, you know - said performing magic on a baby whose skull isn’t, uh, closed frequently causes brain damage. You’ve got to stop now, both of you. I know I may not be the most popular of Harry’s godparents,” this with the audible sneer the Brothers all knew intimately, “but I won’t have you putting my godson at a disadvantage or risking his intellectual future.”

Silence fell. The Brothers waited with bated breath.

“Christ, Snape-”

“Oh, fuck off, James, you needn’t wring my hand like that-”

“No, Sev, he’s right, we had no idea. The damage we might have done - the damage we might have already done-”

“Well, it’s a-a new...not very many people know. No need to feel guilty.”

“He’s a bit pink under the sauce, though. James, he looks a bit pink, doesn’t he? Pinker than usual? Sev, what if we’ve already done something terrible?”

“It’s probably just irritation due to the tabasco in the sauce. We would’ve wiped it off, but we worried it might get in his little eyes. And blind him. I should let you go.”

“Right, yes. Severus, mate, really. Thank you. I’ve been an asshole about the godfather thing, and here you’ve more than lived up to Lily’s praise.”

“No trouble, no trouble. Good evening. Don’t forget to walk! No apparting with baby Harry.”

The door snicked shut, and the Brothers let out a collective sigh of relief as they sagged back in their chairs. Brother Snape reentered the room and quietly began wrapping Nott’s shoe, the sauce-sodden rag, and the empty horcrux bottle up in the remains of Macnair’s shirt. He thrust the bundle into Tommy’s arms with a smile capable of sending thunderclouds scuttling, and hissed, “Pack your bags, Brother mine. It’s time for a little...sober vacation.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Life’s greatest damnation and acquittal is its relentless progression. Most friendships, and even brotherhood, fade, but our mistakes never loom quite so large as they do when only just behind us. Eleven years later, a young boy named Harry and a successful banker named Tom awoke together out of sound slumbers on opposite sides of the country, craving both a goblet of firewhisky and a date with Cindy Shurman from year Seven. Neither would achieve either yearning, but that was all right, and if sometimes neither fully understood what prompted some of his more inexplicable desires, he was no different from the rest of humanity. All was well.

**Author's Note:**

> Gifted with love to Higgins, Hale, and Peterson, who prompted the idea of Voldemort in college flopping around grabbing things and making garbage horcruxes while his bros got worried.


End file.
